


A Distant Mirror

by Zatnikatel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zatnikatel/pseuds/Zatnikatel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Art by <a href="http://euclase.tumblr.com/"><b>Euclase</b></a><br/>Spoilers up to and including 8.17</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Distant Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Art by [**Euclase**](http://euclase.tumblr.com/)  
>  Spoilers up to and including 8.17

Troy comes on one night while Dean is only half-awake, and he watches it through muzzy eyes and tries to ignore the patch of drool he sluiced out onto Castiel's shoulder while he dozed.

After a while, Castiel clears his throat and makes a half-assed gesture at the flickering images. "That performer resembles your Sean Bean," he notes dryly. "Should I assume this means he dies?" 

_Still not over Ned Stark then _, and fuck, Dean can't stop his own snort of disbelief. "Still can't believe they iced Ned fuckin' Stark."__

Castiel huffs. "Boromir too."

"Boromir too," Dean agrees. "Jesus. I liked Boromir." He shifts closer, because Castiel is all warm and naked and _potential_ there next to him, this closeness still a novelty, with so much to learn about what it can bring them. Walking hopeful fingers up the rise of Castiel's thigh, he scrapes his teeth over the protective sigil he tattooed under Castiel's collarbone when his friend trudged home after the Naomi shitstorm went down. "I've read the books, he survives," he slurs against smooth, hard skin. "He sails home in The Odyssey. And we should—"

"If they ever tell my story, let them say I walked with giants," Castiel cuts in. "Men rise and fall like the winter wheat, but these names will never die."

It's random as fuck, but Castiel's voice is that crunch of brittle glass that turns Dean's blood from pleasantly warm to simmering hot inside the two seconds it takes for the angel to get to the end of the sentence, and then there is a beat of silence so convenient Dean wonders if he might see Brad Pitt staring out of the television with a hand behind his ear as he waits for Dean's reply.

"Please tell me that was foreplay," he manages finally, and he knows his own voice is a little breathless.

"Let them say, I lived in the time of Hector, tamer of horses," Castiel rumbles back, maybe a little thoughtful as he regards Dean. "Let them say, I lived in the time of Achilles, beloved of Zeus."

Dean squeezes a drop of saliva from somewhere. "That was foreplay, right?"

Castiel gives a little eyeroll. "Sing, oh goddess, the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus," he breathes out, "that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans…"

Dean didn't even notice through the aggressive twitch of his cock as every red blood cell in his top half puts his vital organs on hold and sprints to the basement, but Castiel is still speaking, dipping his head and teasing Dean's lips with the words.

"There were hundreds of them, Dean, thousands… the night lit up with watchfires stretching back across the plains of Scamander, so far and so brilliant that I thought them stars." He kisses his way along the line of Dean's jaw, his hand gentle at Dean's cheek, like it always is now. "The days were golden and still as we waited, the sky blue and endless… and then at once smoke-black and loud with cries and the clash of blades on bronze as we cut, and thrust, and battled hard for glory, Dean, for the god of war is merciless and deals out death to the men who deal out death, no matter if their war is righteous."

"Fuck, you were _there_ ," Dean grunts out to the rough tickle of Castiel's stubble on his neck, as his friend licks a damp trail down his throat.

"We raided, we plundered, we laid siege to Troy," Castiel confirms in a murmur, pushing up the soft, worn cotton of Dean's tee so he can move lower down, to swipe his tongue across Dean's nipple. "We fought them on the ramparts, and drenched the city walls with them; we fought them down into the dirt, until the plains ran red with blood and the river was choked with corpses; we fought them into the sea and set their ships to flames of holy fire… we craved the slaughter, and turned them to carrion for the crows and dogs to feast on."

It's _fuckin' epic_ , all things considered, even if the sharp sting of Castiel's lips as they latch on is damned distracting, but all Dean can think of is straining muscles, swords, spears, LARPing with Charlie Bradbury, Spartacus, hell, Sparta _Cas_ , and he blurts out, "What were you wearing?" before he can edit his thoughts into something that sounds suitably impressed.

Castiel stops and frowns up at Dean mid-suckle, waits a second before he abandons the nub of spit-slippery flesh and raps out a flat, "What was I wearing?"

Dean shrugs as best he can. "It was a gladiator thing, wasn't it?"

Nothing for a second, as Castiel studies him, intent as ever.

"Only you know – you said blades on bronze," Dean elaborates sheepishly. "I've LARPed. I was Braveheart. So I was thinking… leather skirt, armor. Like you said. A gladiator thing."

There is the sly upward curl of Castiel's lips as he deadpans, "A gladiator thing?"

Trying a little harder for something less like sleaze and more in the ballpark of casual, Dean nods. "It helps me. Get a…" He summons up the coordination required to reach up and tap his temple. "Mental picture," he clarifies, a little desperate maybe. "Of the battle. You know – tactics. Strategy."

Castiel's eyes are gleaming now, because he's making Dean work for this. "You mean a cuirass?" he suggests, and his tongue comes out, shy pink tip of it just resting on his top lip, like he's mulling. "I think you mean a Greek muscle cuirass," he gravels out then, decisive.

His head tilt is smug as he braces himself on his hands to push up, sliding his knees along the bed each side of Dean, and as he does, the air ripples in that way it always used to when he still had enough mojo to phase out of existence and take wing.

In the space of that split- _split_ second convulsion of space-time, Dean isn't looking at pale, silvery-scarred skin any more, he's looking at something straight out of antiquity or the movies. He drinks it in on a scarcely contained gasp; loose-knitted chainmail and molded bronze plates engraved with curling snakes and roaring lions, strapped to black-brown boiled leather studded with rivets, tooled strips of the hide falling to mid-thigh. "Didn't think you still had enough juice for tricks like that," he quips, voice a little high, and he's goggling so wide it hurts as he tracks up to a battered, plumed helmet, and Castiel's eyes feral slits now as he stares back from behind its barred visor.

Dean hasn't ever really dwelt too closely on what Castiel is – _was_ – or what Castiel has seen in all his long years of existence – maybe it comforts him not to. But he's thinking about it now, thinking about what lies under the flesh and bone Castiel wears, thinking about celestial intent, something immense, luminous, a supernova older than time. Still, "Fuck, you were _there_ ," is all he can say, in a whispered echo of himself, and Castiel's gaze goes distant.

"If you could only know what I was, Dean…" he answers, pensive as a sigh. "A spirit of the air, storm clouds, thunder and lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes. I was stardust, Dean, a comet… I walked on the moon, and touched the sun." His eyes have drifted away, but they snap back to Dean now, almost vicious, his tone going harder. "I was God's power, and wrath, and vengeance." 

Dean finds that his heart is racing, and his throat is suddenly thick. He swallows once, almost gasps it out, his need to _know_.

"Show me." 

The words are scarcely out of him before Castiel's fingers are tapping softly on his forehead, and the air is suddenly oddly heavy with _something_ ; with age, with knowledge, with a gust of wind that buffets the curtains, with a crackle of sounds, with the scent of salt, and copper and—

Dean is upright, surrounded by a cruel sea of humanity, the angry heave and plunge of hundreds of men, and his ears are filled with a deafening, discordant din: screams of pain, howls of rage, the clang and grind of metal on metal. He takes in a horrified gulp of smoky air, and the stink and taste of piss, shit, and putrefaction, of burning meat, of _Hell_ , are pungent in his nose and thick on his tongue. He cries out his confusion and shock, whirls around, breaks into an uncoordinated, panicked run that leads nowhere, for he is wading through knee-deep carnage, through smashed, bloated carcasses that crawl with maggots, and the dead and dying cling on tightly to him while the living scramble to hold their ground.

There is the solid thump of mace on flesh, the strangled yell that follows it; there is the flashing arc of swords, the cut-off grunt, the wet sprinkle of arterial spray and the heavier spatter of gray matter on Dean's cheeks. A thunderous noise then, the drumming of hooves, and a shape looms up and sweeps by Dean at speed, its whinny shrill. A bone-jarring impact slams into his upper back and drives the breath from him, sending him lurching forward. He loses his balance and crashes to earth, landing on his knees and barely managing to twist and absorb the shockwave through his thigh. Almost at once, there is the zip of something rocketing past his cheek, so close he claps a hand up, pulling it back to find his fingertips red. _Blood_ , he muses idiotically, _my blood_ , and as he stares at it, it dawns on him that this is no dream, no vision. It's real. He can be hurt here, he can be killed here, and the revelation is simultaneously terrifying and utterly thrilling, and…

_He has done this_.

Purgatory, always running, killing as he went; terrified but excited too, because of the _possibilities_ , because God did not exist there and everything was permitted.

It was pure there, and it is _pure_ instinct that has Dean roll away from a spear as it buries itself in the gritty soil next to him. There, in his peripheral vision, is the dull sheen of a weapon, and he hurls himself towards it. He closes numb fingers around the grip and flips over onto his ass, growling out a surge of ferocity as he swings blindly with all the force he has in him. The blade grates through armor before it meets something less resistant, and Dean hears a shriek but doesn't look, scrabbling himself away, his eyes falling on an outflung arm and a shield he scoops up as he springs to his feet once more.

Adrenaline is fizzing through Dean's veins as he leans to evade the rabble, a blow hammering down on the shield as he ducks, knocking it from his hand. He curses as he catches a glimpse of his attacker, eyes close-up and glittering, and he roars manic hatred as he whips up the sword and cuts for the man's neck so hard and fast he can feel the stretch and wince of tendons in his shoulder. Warm blood plumes into his face and he grimaces, bile burning in his throat as he spits out the sickly-sweet fluid. Another harsh yell has him spinning then, to see a second man staggering too close behind him, an arrow in his neck. Dean looks up to see them hailing down, a lethal rain of silver. His shield gone, he reacts intuitively, reaching to grasp a buckle on the man's armor and pulling him close. He tumbles them down onto the bed of corpses, and the body that conceals him jerks spasmodically in his embrace as the barbs thunk into it.

A rest, the chance to regroup, and Dean slumps, swallows past the parched dryness of his throat. _Show me_ , he had said, and the angel's battery maybe isn't as drained as they thought, because here is ancient history, seething around him. "Cas, you sneaky sonofabitch," he mutters, and he peers out from under his human shield, at once appalled and enthralled, until the chaos is too much and he snaps his eyes away and up. 

He hadn't even noticed that it's day, that the sun is shining its warmth down on his face, its glow filtered through gossamer streaks of water vapor. He shuts out the frenzy, seeks one second of refuge in the incongruous peace of the sky, and… high up there in the clouds there is a grayish patch, spreading like a bruise on the flawless blue skin of the world.

_Raincloud_ , Dean theorizes abstractedly. _Storm's blowing in_.

Though far away, it holds his attention; though noiseless, it drowns out the din that resounds on all sides of his hiding place. It is hypnotic, and for a stolen sojourn of time-out-of-mind, Dean focuses on it. It is hazy, nebulous… or is it, because as Dean tracks its progress he sees that it seems to be solidifying into something more substantial. He squints, can just about identify small black dots moving erratically within its borders, because it isn't a raincloud at all, it's…

_Insects_.

Their combined mass is growing bigger because it's coming closer, descending like a biblical plague of locusts, and now Dean can see that it is a dense, swirling vortex of individual forms whirling industriously around each other, splitting apart into separate clusters before coming back together. Over and over it happens, and occasionally one form breaks free and wafts down like leaf in autumn, then another, two now, then three; until there is a sudden, pupil-searing flash, like the sun reflecting off glass. It has Dean clamping his eyelids closed, and when he blinks away the tears he looks up again to see that the swarm has dissolved with intent, establishing itself into smaller funnel-systems that spread out across the sky.

Dean can see them more clearly now, _not insects, birds_ , and they wheel and glide, wings outstretched to catch the updraft before they form into a V-formation and dive like bombers come to strafe the crowd. They streak ever lower, growing ever larger, and _what kind of birds are they?_ Dean wonders wildly, because no bird has a wingspan twenty feet wide.

They diverge and careen off in many directions at what seems like the last possible moment, but one comes tumbling directly overhead, and its proximity brings clarity. 

Dean tracks it with his eyes as it swoops down with fluid grace, its sword arm describing a slow circle, for it is no bird. It is a man, armor, chainmail and helmet-clad as all the soldiers are, and it hangs in thin air for a moment before it starts to drift above the clamor, back and forth as if it goes where the breeze takes it. _Angel_ , and the awareness sends heat rippling through Dean's groin. _Angels are warriors of God_ , and he feels dizzy and drunk with how dazzling this one is in its element, backlit by fiery sunlight, its wings beating with slow-motion laziness. It leans to poke and trail its silver blade through the crowd in a way that seems almost indifferent, until its collective prey look up and cry out as if from one throat; and then Dean sees the white, savage flash of the angel's smile.

Their war forgotten, the panicked troops mill around, clumsy and impotent, and there is noise then, sudden and blasting, a formless, earsplitting _true voice_ that drills through Dean's skull as painfully as it did in Pontiac, Illinois. He's already cringing with the agony of its pitch when the angel extends its free hand, elegantly, as if it is feeling the air. The gesture is like a blessing but Dean can see that light is there, a luminous stigmata flickering in the center of the angel's palm, and he can almost hear the warning in his head, like he heard it shouted out to him in Grants Pass.

_Shut your eyes_. 

The snap of ignition cracks out like a gunshot, and Dean can see the quicksilver of its flare through his eyelids. He thinks, _no_ , and then he isn't thinking at all, because he is at ground zero, and the earth is rocking under him.

_Did I black out?_ is Dean's first thought as he cracks his eyes open. 

The air immediately above him is busy with flecks of cinders and ash, and he has to snort out a noseful of dust as he cranes his head.

He's lying in a large, clear space of scorched earth, from which lethargic smoke wisps haze up. The area is littered with charred objects, some of which Dean thinks might be bones, but he doesn't examine them too closely because shouting and motion from behind him has him twisting clumsily to see that the angel seems to have lost its advantage. It is imprisoned in a circle of flames some fifteen yards away, its wings furled for protection as it dodges agilely, batting its sword at the bright, burning torches being jabbed aggressively into its space. _Holy fire_ , Dean guesses, and he feels an uncomfortable lurch in his gut as he watches the soldiers enjoying their sport, a lurch that evolves into a sharp stab of dismay when the angel goes down.

The men jeer and heckle as it sprawls, and this is his advantage, Dean knows; it's his chance to slink out of sight. He measures the distance to a ragged treeline, calculates the odds of making it under cover before anyone notices movement. The soldiers are engrossed as he surreptitiously rolls the thickset, armored body off him and to the side, and he wriggles over onto his belly, glances ahead of him one last time before he sprints to safety.

The angel is still prone, framed between the legs of one of its assailants.

It is motionless, staring at Dean, its eyes lasering out from behind its visor.

It tilts its head curiously.

The connection is visceral, like a lightning bolt skewering Dean's heart with the revelation, _it's you_ , and he's already pushing up into a run as he chokes out, "Cas."

The men don't know what hits them as Dean launches himself through the air, arms pointed ahead of him in a swan dive that bulldozes him through the huddle, the force of the collision ensuring he brings two of the troops crashing down with him. He makes landfall in a belly-searing skid through sand, stones, and flames, pebbles and grit bouncing up into his eyes as he breaches the trap, and the air bends above him as the angel, _Cas_ , beats his wings and is gone. Flipped over onto his back in the next second, Dean can only spit dirt at the empty sky as a boot plants itself firmly on his chest and a ring of faces look down at him, eyes glaring out from behind their closed helmets with murder in mind.

To his left, there is the scurring-whizzing sound of a sword being drawn, and Dean snaps his head around to see bloody metal already starting the horizontal swing that will slice open his throat when it makes contact.

Beyond it, in the distance, are sand-colored walls, rising up high and impenetrable, and _Troy_ occurs to Dean in a feverish instant of inspiration. He doesn't know if they will understand him, has no clue if this is all a figment of his imagination or the angelic version of the holodeck, but, "I know a way into the city," he yells, hoarse and desperate, as he shuts his eyes.

The universe stands still and Dean is frozen, waiting for the loving lick of metal across his jugular, when a sharp kick in the ribs sends him into a fetal curl, an involuntary grunt bursting out between his lips. There is a brief silence then, before a noncommittal, hacked-out noise has him chance a squint upwards. What he can see of their faces doesn't look any less grim if he's honest, but he hasn't sprouted another mouth under his chin, and he fancies that must mean something. He waits, even reins in his nerves sufficiently to chance a shit-eating grin that doesn't seem to impress his captors. But at the very least, they point their stink-eyes at each other instead of him before one of them motions all but one of the others to shuffle along behind him for an animated pow-wow a few feet away.

Above Dean, the remaining man coughs and Dean slants his eyes in that direction to see that the guy is examining him with a mixture of smirk and sneer, his gaze tracking down Dean's legs. He's pointing a hooked spear at Dean, and an equally dangerous looking dagger is thrust into a leather strap secured around his meaty calf, just under his knee.

The weapon might be just within reach, but his guard is brawny enough to do serious damage if he isn't softened up first, so Dean bides his time, even if anxiety is crawling along every fiber of him. He puts a protective hand on his flannel-clad thigh, where brightly colored cartoon characters are marching, and now he's thinking about it he can spare a moment to send an irate mental curse Castiel's way for dropping him here wearing nothing but his sleep pants and a Led Zepp tee. 

"Angry Birds," he supplies into the awkward silence, trying to keep his voice steady and confident.

And at last, proof that Castiel must be working the mojo in Dean's favor even if it's in a roundabout sort of way, because the man raises an eyebrow and comes back at Dean as clear as a bell.

"Your tribe?"

_Thank fuckin' God_.

"My tribe," Dean verifies through the slim zing of hope he feels, because if nothing else the conversation might hold the grim reaper at bay long enough for him to get his hands on something he can use to protect himself.

The man's look turns less distasteful and more inquisitive as he ruminates over that. Then, "Why is your tribe angry?" he queries.

"My tribe is angry because…" _Cas, you fuckin' fuck_. Dean grits his teeth in frustration and just puts it out there. "Because of the pigs. The pigs keep stealing our – stuff."

His guard's face turns ugly at that, nostrils flaring, and he hoiks out a ferocious gob of phlegm the size of a cue ball. "Those Trojan scum steal from Sparta too," he snarls. "They stole our Queen, and daily we fight for her return."

A little of the tension needling its way up the back of Dean's neck eases off, and he runs with the unexpected camaraderie. "Light-fingered sonsofbitches, those Trojans," he commiserates affably, and since it seems they're literally speaking each other's language after all, he thinks he might as well do some more smooth-talking. He hails the goons who stepped out. "Hey, why waste time fighting your way in there when you can walk right through the gates?"

The tallest of them turns back, reaching up to pull off his helmet. His jaw is chiseled square under his beard, his nose is like the beak of an eagle, his eyes are haughty and remote. He looks dignified. He looks _familiar_ , and Dean has to blink hard as the man grates back an imperious reply.

"One does not simply walk into Troy."

_Odysseus_ , Dean realizes. _Or maybe Boromir._ "Cas, you sly little fucker," he breathes out below earshot as he regroups. He shakes his head. "No, that's not what I mean—"

"Then what do you mean?" the man answers, with a sort of cordial venom. He strides closer, raising the sword he almost used earlier to decapitate Dean in a way that suggests Dean could still be about to lose his head after all, and he raises a defensive hand, crouching lower.

The man smiles, a stilted, bitter effort that doesn't even get within a country mile of his eyes, as he continues lifting the weapon up before very deliberately sliding it back into its sheath. Even if hostility still radiates from the guy, Dean is putting that in the ticks column, and he knows he slumps a little with the sheer relief of another reprieve.

"Near ten years we have camped on these plains to wage this war," the man says then, glacially calm. "Our sundials and water clocks have worn out with use. We are ready for it to end, for we have tasted too much blood. Our homelands have been distant too long, and I dream of seeing my wife, my son, the shores of Ithaca. The nights grow colder now, and…" He pauses, looks away, over at the distant battle before he focuses back on Dean, features somber as he breathes out a resigned gust of air.

Dean sees how the man's lips purse to form the next word, and he almost barks out a laugh. _Or maybe Ned Stark_ , he thinks, and he has nothing to lose and everything to gain, so he jumps in. "Winter is coming?" he suggests, as sympathetically as he can with a spear jabbing him between the shoulder blades.

The man gapes, his eyebrows streaking down to meet at the bridge of his nose. "You would steal the words from my tongue," he marvels. "Are you a seer? Have the gods gifted you with their wisdom of the spirits and knowledge of the supernatural?"

Dean ponders that for a fraction of a second. "Something like that," he returns carefully.

"Then you can see things that are hidden from others," the man continues, hushed and urgent, and he's squatting down beside Dean now, impatient. "You can see a way into the city."

_Hell yes_ , and Dean nods emphatically.

There is a stick a foot or so away, and he reaches for it with a wink, uses his free hand to brush a clear, sandy space in front of them both. "You smuggle your best men in there," he says as he sketches it out. "Inside this. You make it out of wood, nice and big, real pretty. Wait until nighttime, then push it up outside the walls where they can see it. You move the rest of your people out of here so they think you're leaving. They see this, they think it's a tribute. They open the gates, push it inside." He stabs his stick pencil into the dirt with a flourish. "When it's dark, you guys pile out of there and take the place."

There is a moment of critical silence and then a slow, significant cant of the head. "I like your plan, seer. We shall start constructing this pig at once."

Even though the big man's face is breaking into a grin and his eyes are sparking with what looks like real warmth, Dean can't help himself. "Dude, that's not a pig," he clips out.

The man's eyes flick down towards the dirt scratchings again, and when they focus back on Dean he thinks maybe they're a little pissy, so he curbs himself, schooling a note of diplomacy into his voice before trying again. "It's not a pig, it's a horse."

To give him credit, the guy does study the diagram more carefully this time, tugging at his beard thoughtfully. Then, "As I said. We shall start constructing this pig at once."

Dean blurts out, "What part of _it's a horse_ are you not getting, buddy?" before he can suck the words back inside himself and fume silently instead.

The man's expression darkens perceptibly at the challenge. "Tell me, seer," he asks. "Why did you free the daemon?"

The detour is spoken amiably enough, but the note of renewed suspicion underlying the question is clear and it knocks Dean even more off-kilter. "Daemon?" he echoes uselessly.

The man snorts. "Your ignorance is as unconvincing as your horse," he decides witheringly. "As unconvincing as the false neutrality Zeus claims while he rouses his thrice ten thousand spirits of the air to punish those who would make war against the Trojans." He looks up then, to the sky, wary, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. "The daemons roam the middle element between mortal man and the gods, as light as breath and cloaked in mist... until they descend to wreak chaos and disorder."

_Spirit of the air_ , Castiel had said, and _angels_ , Dean realizes with a jolt at the same second it occurs to him that he has no clue if these guys know what angels are. He sticks with what they do know, and masks his nerves with a shot of Crixus. "Fuck the gods – Zeus is a dick," he counters, his bravado made emphatic by his own memory of the deity's shark-eyes staring him out. "And I'm a seer, aren't I? I had a vision – a whole bunch more of those daemon things heading this way. Rescue mission for the one you trapped. I saved you guys."

Dean stops, waits, and is he imagining that his captor's annoyed look is lifting, that it's being replaced by uncertainty? Maybe not, because the man pushes back up to a stand and reaches to retrieve his sword from its sheath again. He runs his thumb along the edge of it with exaggerated slowness, licking his lips as he glowers down at Dean. 

"I saved you guys," Dean insists faintly. "And it's a horse. They like horses don't they?" More of Castiel's words pop up in his head then, and he makes his voice firmer. "Hector does. Hector, tamer of horses." He raises his eyebrows up, persuasive. "See?"

The man's expression contorts into a definite frown. "Hector?"

In the next moment Dean is yanked up and around by the bicep, his arm twisted painfully behind him as he is frog-marched a short distance away, his passage so forcible his feet barely touch the dirt. Pulling them both to a halt, the man points his sword over Dean's shoulder to a small object moving back and forth in the wide, scrubby no-man's-land that separates the front lines from the city walls, and his breath is a sour blast across Dean's cheek. 

"What do you see now, seer?"

Dean squints, focuses hard, _chariot dragging a dead guy_ , and the legends are all coming back to him now. _Fuckdammit_. There are varying degrees of stupidity, and he reckons he just scored a seven.

"Daily our Lord Achilles desecrates Hector's body, while royal Priam weeps, and wails, and begs for pity and respect," the man confirms, voice dripping with contempt.

Ignoring how his hands are shaking, Dean fights back the urge to respond with a smart-ass quip. "Friend, your guy can road-haul Hector for as long as he wants, he'll get no argument from me. But they like horses, that's why it has to be a—"

"If you are a seer, then you must know Cassandra."

This new change of tack is as abrupt as the previous one was, and Dean doesn't consider his reply, just swallows down his alarm and hopes for the best. "Cassie? Yeah, we had a fling back in the day, but I—"

"Apollo granted Cassandra the gift of prophecy when he had his snake lick her eyes," the man flares back. "Did Apollo's snake lick your eyes also, seer?"

That mental picture is so damn wrong that Dean flinches as he tries to amend himself. "Fuck no," he bristles back. "And it was a different Cass—"

"Did Apollo grant you this foresight, seer?" is the answering snarl. "Apollo, who fights alongside the fucking Trojans? Apollo, who aided Hector in murdering Patroclus, beloved of Achilles?"

Before he can formulate an answer, a sharp shove in the small of Dean's back sends him stumbling to the ground on all-fours. He doesn't clench his guts quite fast enough to prevent the boot that hooks up into his belly from winding him, but as he jack-knifes, lungs vacuuming in air as best they can, he scrabbles up a damp handful of dirt and stones and hurls it up high, kicking out hard at the same time and taking the man off of his feet. As he crashes down onto his backside, the man's sword slips from his grasp and Dean throws himself at it, raising his own voice above the shouts of alarm he can hear, to holler out, "Castiel, you fuckin' assbutt, I need you here _now_."

And there it is, at last, that sound of feathers carding the air, and Dean pushes up, turns, and sees the angel landing neatly behind him. 

Castiel bends at the knees, poised and light on his feet, hops nimbly in between Dean and their attackers, baring his teeth and hissing at them all like an angry cat. The sibilant warning evolves into a guttural battle cry as the men draw their swords and rush forward, and Dean doesn't think, just puts up his borrowed blade, fending off a downward slice that might have taken his arm off at the elbow. He pushes off of it and then jumps back, narrowly missing having his innards spilled on the sand as the sharp point of the weapon flashes through the air in front of his hips. No time to thank his lucky stars, Dean swings his own sword up, opening a gash on his opponent's thigh from which blood fountains out generously, along to an agonized cry. _One down_ , and even if every move is informed by sharp fear, and he can hear distant yells and see more figures racing to join in the fray, exhilaration and bloodlust are blooming in Dean as he sneaks a look at Castiel. 

The angel is moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, performing a deadly ballet that Dean knows by heart because they have danced it together across long hours of practice. And he falls into the step and rhythm of it, back to back, protective, offensive, as they thrust, jab, hack, and slice. Castiel is silent but Dean can see his smile under the visor, as ferocious as before, and it drives him wild with a kind of joy, because he hasn't seen his friend move with this degree of smooth precision since before Naomi tortured it out of him. Dean's delight at seeing it now suddenly turns dirty, all stitched through with a sharp needle of want and a little shimmy in his cock, and _Castiel_. And on that name Dean thinks he might have said out loud on a reverential sigh, his friend's head is swiveling, and then – then Dean is flying, his stomach flip-flopping as he soars up.

This isn't like before, treasured close and swathed in softness. This time, Dean can feel the blast of a cool breeze in his face, and his legs dangle in space. Castiel has an arm threaded under one of Dean's, his grip ruthlessly tight, and in his side vision Dean can see the angel's wing flaring out long and wide, its beat leisurely as mist splits around its leading edge, its flight feathers flexing against the lift and drag of the air. The ground falls away fast, too fast, and Dean slams his free hand up over his friend's arm where it crosses his chest, finds a buckle somewhere behind him, hooks his fingers through it and clings on for dear life. His guts roil sickly, and he knows he would be hurling right now if it weren't for the elation he still feels burning inside him like a fever, holding him together through his nausea. 

He can't help but stare down, despite his swimming head. The city is on a hill and bigger than he would ever have imagined, a vast space enclosed by a wide wall marked with rough, misshapen towers at two corners, its boundaries enclosing untidy clusters of squat, square, bleached-stone buildings. Dots move along narrow, winding strips that mark roads, and bustle about in clear expanses that might be marketplaces; ant-sized people eking out an existence in tranquil-seeming contrast to the skirmish Dean found himself caught up in. He can see that too, and from his bird's eye view as he is carried along by his angel, he notes that the killing field is oddly contained, a large, undulating square of humanity with set perimeters, pitching and yawing on the plains in front of the city gates. Beyond it, stretching down to a headland and a sapphire harbor flecked with boats, are tents, a messy encampment, and Dean catches a glimpse of life going on there as it is inside the city walls. 

Then they are swerving away, and Dean has to bite off his yelp as Castiel sweeps them around to streak inland, following the path cut by a blue-green ribbon of river that coils in from the coastline. The plains of Scamander, Dean recalls his friend telling him, and he finds it hard to keep up with it, his eyes sliding sideways and spinning over a vague blur of changing colors, slopes, and valleys, spotted with wooded groves. In the distance is a mountain, a hazy purple eruption, and as it looms closer Dean can see slate-gray precipices, darker chasms, and forested ridges. He wracks his brains for its name, pulls Gargarus from far-off memories of leaving real life behind and escaping into the Greek myths the summer he was fifteen.

They aren't heading for the mountain though, because the ground is racing by slower. It's getting closer too, and Dean thinks he shouts, "Slow down," as it hurtles up towards him, but his voice is thin and snatched away on the wind. 

He holds his breath, shuts his eyes, but in the next second he's falling. His eyes snap open in disbelief and he barely has time to prep himself for impact before he crashes to earth, his momentum sending him somersaulting ass over tip a couple of times before he spreadeagles on the grass. 

It was ten feet at most, but still Dean finds he's shaking, his teeth clicking together, and he feels suddenly cold. _Shock_ , he realizes, and he wraps an arm around himself, wincing at the sharp pain that makes itself known in his ribs. There is a wet trickle meandering down across his lips from his nose, and he pokes out his tongue and tastes copper. "You dropped me," he whispers, and worry blooms because he knows it must mean _attack_ from some unseen enemy who knocked his friend out of the sky.

A shadow covers the sun then, and Dean finds that he's blinking up at Castiel, who is unruffled and apparently in one piece as he gazes down, eyes narrowed and speculative behind the bars of his helmet. He says nothing, and his stance is rigid and closed-off in a way that sends uncertainty gnawing its way around Dean's heart.

Clearing his throat, Dean scrapes out, "Hey, buddy. Thought you might be in trouble there."

No reply, just the continued gleam of something that might be intent in Castiel's stare.

"This is a joke, right?" Dean presses, but his trepidation has him grip his sword more tightly, and it's the same sixth sense that has kept him alive in a profession that has almost been the bloody death of him more times than he can count that tells him to roll through the pain in his torso just as the flash of silver scythes down towards him. He crabs away, isn't quite fast enough to avoid its nick, and can't hold in his cry as a thin, bloody seam bubbles open on his tricep, but he manages to gauge the force and angle of the next swipe, the one after that too, putting his blade up to parry them without even thinking about it.

Castiel stops then, takes a few steps back and considers Dean, and his silence is a stifling, bewildering weight broken only by the beat of Dean's heart as it slams out its panic in a staccato tattoo against his sternum. He passes a hand across his brow, then under his nose, to wipe away the blood that continues to seep there, braces inwardly against his friend's irrational anger, and starts, "Cas, what the f—"

Words chime over Dean's, harsh and guttural, _foreign_ , because it's Enochian, a stream of it directed at Dean too fast for easy translation. And _this is wrong_ , Dean thinks, in an instant of clarity borne of his growing apprehension and the sense that something about his friend is utterly changed. It sends a chill of _not again_ through him, but, "Cas," he persists through his fright once it falls quiet again, and then, on a hunch, he taps his fingers on his chest and dredges up some of the ancient language himself. "Zod oh reh geh," he offers tentatively. "Friend," he reiterates. "And I know you can speak my language." 

Castiel examines Dean again before giving a doubtful little growl and finally asking, "Who are you?"

The confirmation of Castiel's ignorance isn't really a surprise given his attack, but it still hurts. _Mind-whammied_ , Dean theorizes briefly, and it brings with it the recall of Castiel's dead-eyed stare in Lucifer's crypt, and the same hollow feeling of dread he felt when he thought his friend was lost to him again. His mouth has gone so dry his tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth, but Dean backtracks to the moment when Castiel tilted his head from within his prison of fire, and hopes he doesn't stammer as he fishes, "You don't know?"

After an overlong beat, Castiel returns a grim, "I don't know you."

There is a cutting certainty to the statement that reminds Dean of the Castiel he hasn't seen since the first months he knew him, before everything the angel believed in was ripped out from beneath him. It's unsettlingly reminiscent of _you're not my family_ too, but Dean keeps his tone conciliatory and reasonable so as not to spook his friend. "Then why did you come back for me?"

Castiel's voice is still laced with suspicion. "You called me by my name."

Nodding slowly, Dean goads just a little. "That the only reason? Only I thought maybe you recognized me." He jerks his head in the approximate direction they came from. "Back there, when you first saw me." 

At last there's a more promising reaction, as Castiel's shoulders relax a little. He cocks his head and answers, "There _is_ something familiar about you." 

His hackles are lowered, and it's a concession, but it's said in a flat, emotionless way that doesn't raise Dean's hopes much, and the gap he can feel between them stays unbridgeable as Castiel stabs the point of his sword in Dean's direction.

"You carry the taint of the underworld," the angel goes on, just as icy. "But you aren't a demon." 

Castiel reaches up with his other hand to unhook the chinstrap of his helmet as he speaks, and finally pulls off the domed metal headgear. And Dean's chest squeezes tight with pleasure at the same time he puffs out a sharp, painful gasp, and it zips through his mind, _Cas, what the fuck did you do?_ , because it's Castiel, but somehow, some way, it _isn't_ , and Dean knows it without a shadow of a doubt.

The angel's face is tanned nut-brown, his eyes blazing out jewel-bright from under a shaggy, coal-black mop of curls longer than Dean has ever seen him wear. He looks at Dean with a regard that suggests interest but no recognition at all, even as his features fall into the same quizzical half-frown _Cas_ wears when he's trying to keep up with Dean. The expression chews its way right into Dean's heart and pounds through his veins as he realizes there is only one possible explanation, even though he can't quite wrap his brain around the complexities of it. 

He doesn't try to figure out what went wrong with the mojo, plays for time instead; and he does it damned carefully, because if he's right then he hasn't even met Castiel yet. "I was down there," he acknowledges, keeping his sword out in front of him and watching his friend like a hawk as he pushes himself back upright. "In Hell. For forty years."

"Impossible," Castiel raps back, a distinctly serrated edge to his voice now. "Hades is… disinclined to permit his subjects their leave." 

He half-turns and starts to circle Dean as he speaks, and Dean matches his stride, taking his measure just like he knows Castiel is doing to him. "One does not simply walk out of Hell," he agrees, disguising his anxiety with a note of flippancy he hopes might disarm his friend again. "But I didn't just walk out, I was pulled out. By an angel of the Lord. _You_. You fell from grace for me." 

In that instant, Castiel's poise drains away. His eyes widen, eyebrows rising so that his brow corrugates, and it makes Dean's heart leap with a second's forlorn hope that dies when his friend's face falls blank and unreadable again.

Dean zeroes in on the next lunge fractionally before Castiel flies at him because he can see it telegraphed in the way the angel rises up onto the balls of his feet. There is no time for protest, Dean sidesteps adroitly as he is rushed, sweeping his blade up to clang musically against Castiel's and twisting it in mid-air to deflect the cross-strike he knows will follow because he knows Castiel, has fenced with him so often in the last few weeks that he can predict every strike and think around every offensive strategy. As the angel skids to a halt and whips around, Dean is already pivoting and bending at the knees, launching himself up into the air by three feet or more to leap over the downward swish that targets his lower legs, and he's on the move the second he lands, backing away. He raises a placating hand as he goes, tries again to appeal to the connection that might keep him alive long enough for his own Castiel to reach back through the centuries and pull him out of this debacle.

"Cas, listen to me. It was you who pulled me out, you who—" 

"You lie."

The trace of a faint, wintry smile flits across Castiel's lips, but his eyes smolder hostility as he prowls towards Dean again. "I am malak, I can't fall," he declares. "Malakim don't fall. That is immutable. Lucifer promised whole dominions to any demon who seduced a malak to fall… we can't be tempted, it isn't possible. We are steadfast, even if the Lightbringer was not."

Castiel's voice goes up a little at the end of his sentence, another _tell_ , and Dean knows he will lunge and jab again now, has the move committed to memory. He brings his weapon up to block the lethally sharp point of the angel's sword, sparks flying at the contact. "It _is_ possible," he punches out as he cuts off the smooth diagonal slash that follows, and he tamps down his frustration, tries to stay reasonable as he moves out of range. "Cas, you will fall. For me. It was you who redeemed me." 

He spares a swift glance around him as he speaks, scopes their surroundings for anything that could trip him, returns to watching his friend for the signs he has learned by heart; the subtle tense of Castiel's shoulders that always signals action, the way his eyes dart fleetingly in the direction he's about to take, the way his lips curl into a feral grin and his knuckles sharpen as he tightens his grip before pouncing. And pounce he does, and Dean sets his jaw and fends him off as best he can for several minutes, until the angel stands down and grants Dean another respite.

Castiel's face is set flinty as Dean steadies himself, and when he addresses Dean again, he's as mulish as he was before. "You lie," he asserts again, low and stern. "I can't fall. I would become outcast, I would be hunted. I would be _ruined_. My grace would fracture, and each crack would dim its light until there was nothing more of it, nothing more of _me_. I would be lost."

Dean can hear his breath wheeze painfully out of him, and freezing sweat is trickling down his back under his tee. His head is throbbing now, as if a steel band is strapped tight around it, and he blinks hard, coughs harshly. His legs feel weak, and he wants nothing more than to curl up on the dirt and shut his eyes, but he goes again, because he remembers how he talked Castiel around in Zachariah's green room, and in the crypt, and maybe if he tries hard enough he'll break through whatever this is like he did then, like he _will_ then. "Cas, please," he starts. "You and me, we're fam—"

"And yet..." Castiel jumps in, pulls Dean up, but then his voice trails off, and suddenly his face isn't stark with anger any more – it's falling into something troubled and melancholy. "I think I have dreamed of you," he says, right out of the blue.

The tangent is underpinned with a note of yearning, and even though the claim makes no real sense under these circumstances it sends new hope zinging through Dean. He grabs the end of the complicated, knotted thread that links them, winds it around his hand and damn well holds onto it. "What did you dream?" he prompts, and he waits, tense and ready.

"I have dreamed of a flame of life," the angel murmurs, his lips curling into a slow, wistful smile. "I have dreamed the shape of it, the sharp edges of its bones and the warm dips and furrows of its flesh. I have dreamed the curve of its cheek, although I have never seen its face. I have dreamed of drinking its heat and immolating my grace in its fire until there is nothing left of me."

Castiel's vision tracks down Dean and back up again while he speaks, as if he is seeing Dean for the first time, as if he is taking in every inch of someone beloved and has all the time he wants in which to do it. But this isn't like that moment in the crypt when Castiel came out of his trance; there is no dawning horror as he takes in what he has done. Instead there is greed in the way his eyes suddenly blaze and his jaw clenches, greed that scalds low and dirty through Dean's groin. He realizes in a distant sort of way that he's half-hard in the same second that Castiel explodes at him again.

_Make the blade a part of you_ , his Castiel had told him when they first started training together. _Make it an extension of your arm and your thoughts_.

As the thin edge of silver screams through the air in front of him, Dean does just that. He pares himself down into hand-eye coordination fueled by adrenaline and pure defiance, revs himself up to a speed he didn't think he was capable of, blocks every thrust and parries every slash, trapping and spinning Castiel's sword aside with every advance. The angel weaves and wheels around him, a windmill blur of sinuous motion, and despite his exhaustion Dean finds that he can focus, keep up, feel delight in this contest, because he has been a quick study under Castiel's tuition and he knows Castiel, knows how the angel will fight this duel. But this Castiel doesn't know him – and even if Castiel is celestial energy, Dean can be a cobra, a wolf, a panther, a hunter-killer; can be anything that survives by its wits, and its speed, and its instincts. He always has been that.

Metal chimes and clicks against metal, and Dean is impetuous as he ducks, feints, dares to nip in and count coup with a precise tap on Castiel's upper arm; and Castiel's triumphant laughter is music to Dean's ears as he comes back with a lightning riposte, swatting the flat of his sword on Dean's shoulder. It makes Dean's blood boil hot in his veins, and he doesn't know if it's his thirst for the fight or his arousal that he channels into a concise ferocity to rival the angel's predatory grace. It's like fighting his own shadow, and he wastes no energy, his hand sure and certain in deflecting each assault as Castiel orbits around him. He sees the white flash of Castiel's teeth and he smiles back, feels the same pleasure at matching his skills against an equal, and he is vividly conscious of every part of him as he retaliates; the flex and stretch of his skin, the pull of overworked muscles, the fast beat of his heart in his chest. But he is most aware of the impatient twitch of his cock as Castiel stops dead, his eyes gone molten.

"I have dreamed of you," the angel echoes himself, his voice an urgent gasp. "I have dreamed of being matched by something that meets each move with countermove, something that weighs me, something that _knows_ me. I have dreamed of you, and I have longed for you. And now… now at last, I am met."

He flings his blade down and strides forward, and Dean can't resist the lewd surge of lust that cascades through him. He reacts in kind, casting his sword down and meeting the hard crash of Castiel's lips and teeth, and the slide of his savage tongue as the angel floods words into his mouth.

"Who are you?" Castiel says, some place between bemusement and a plea for mercy, as he tumbles Dean down onto soft grass and pushes himself into Dean's crotch. "Tell me who you are."

Castiel is rigid inside whatever passes for underwear back in the time of gods and monsters, and the hard line of his cock is like steel as it grinds against Dean's. It sends a dizzying wave of want tingling through Dean, and he tangles his fingers in Castiel's hair as he kisses the angel bruisingly hard, bites, "Yours," into Castiel's lower lip.

"You claim friendship," Castiel challenges as he mouths his way down Dean's jawline. "You called me by my name. How is it that you know me? Speak the truth."

"I told you how," Dean gasps out, or at least he thinks he does. He isn't sure, because his mind has gone spiraling and he's bending his legs up, wrapping them around Castiel's thighs, hooking his friend and pulling him in even closer, shoving his own dick up to meet Castiel's.

The noise Castiel makes into the soft skin of Dean's neck is little more than a raw, desperate gulp, maybe a little afraid, like he was the first time they did this, and it makes Dean's chest hurt him in a way he knows has nothing to do with his bruised ribs. But then Castiel is back at Dean's mouth and suddenly he's a whole different animal, lips clever and tongue sweeping hard against Dean's, a low, rasping sound coming from the very back of his throat that sends any blood Dean still had left at his northern climes heading south at the speed of light. The whole effect is hotter than Hell on a hot summer's day, and Dean finds his fingers plucking feverishly at buckles and laces, _too many clothes_ , and, "Get this fuckin' stuff _off_ ," he commands breathlessly.

He didn't mean it to sound like an order, but one good thing about the fact it did is that Castiel doesn't waste any time, straightening immediately, his hands a lot more skilled than Dean's when it comes to unfastening various clasps and straps, and still _too damned slow_. "Use the mojo," Dean urges, and if it sounds like he's begging he rationalizes that he really can't help it, since the tip of his dick is nudging its way above the waistband of his sleep pants now, and its one gimlet eye is peering at him expectantly.

Castiel's hands slow for a minute, and he looks puzzled, brow crinkling. "Mojo? I don't understand that ref—"

"Christ," Dean blurts out, and he surges up onto his knees, clamps his hands either side of the angel's face, kisses him so hard he feels lightheaded. "You are fuckin' adorable," he mumbles as he leans back on his haunches, and Castiel follows him, chasing his lips as Dean rips his tee up and over his head. 

Castiel's arms wrap around Dean as the fabric is tossed away, one hand sliding its way up between Dean's shoulders to the back of his head, angling Dean just right. The kiss is fierce, needy, maybe even too keyed up, but Dean opens wide for it. He spars with each stab and swirl of Castiel's tongue as Castiel explores every inch of his mouth, and somewhere in all of that Dean feels the solid, tingling contact of the angel's palm on his shoulder, feels it set itself to the mark Castiel left there. The scar is a barely visible shadow on Dean now, but even so he feels the shock of it spark out of him like it always does, feels Castiel go taut in his arms as he registers the connection.

The angel jerks back, the motion almost violent, and his jaw is slack as he stares at his hand, still firm on Dean's upper arm, and then slants his eyes back to Dean's. "I don't understand," he says, soft and unsure, and he lifts his hand away cautiously, drops his eyes again to inspect it before reaching back, hovering it over the area, so close Dean can feel the hair's breadth of air between them buzz with the proximity.

Dean catches a breath. "Listen to me, assbutt," he says, just as gentle as Castiel suddenly is. "I told you. You saved me. You're the one who gripped me tight and raised me from Perdition... you said that to me." He thinks for a second more. "Or you will. A long time from now."

Castiel cants his head. "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition," he mimics Dean. It's a little halting, like he's feeling the shape of the sentence with his lips, but the power still echoes through the words and it sends a shiver up Dean's spine as Castiel's face scrunches up, dubious. 

"That… doesn't sound like something I would say."

Dean is still pressed up against metal plates, chainmail, and leather, the twinge in his cock getting more and more impatient as it is thwarted again. "What the fuck?" he counters sharply. "That sounds exactly like something you would say. You _said_ it."

He can see Castiel is pondering it, can see his eyes go a little distant as his fingers drift away again and up to rub along his jaw, so damned human even if this is full-metal-jacket warrior of God Dean is dealing with. "But I can't journey to Hades," the angel concludes finally, with familiar, world-weary patience. "I'm malak, a messenger… I told you this. I'm just a footsoldier."

Dean knows he gives his friend a hard look. "You're not just a messenger. And you're not a grunt either, you're a seraph."

He sees the words play across Castiel's expression, a swift trip through mystification, disbelief, and something that might be pride, until his lips quirk up a little, in a _how about that?_ sort of way. "I was promoted, then?" 

That sends Dean on his own distressing jaunt along a scenic route of memories he'd rather forget; his friend's frigid eyes and scornful dismissal in Crowley's lair, his sorrow as he glanced over his shoulder at Dean before the souls blasted out of him and back through the portal, his anguish as he pledged that he would redeem himself to Dean, and _no_ , just _no_. "You have no idea," Dean returns wryly, and he tamps it all down, reaches to fold his fingers around the angel's wrist, and closes the distance between them again, placing Castiel's hand back on his shoulder. "You branded me yours," he says, swaying forward to rest his brow on Castiel's. "Your mark is on my soul."

Castiel disputes the assertion with a prim, "That isn't permitted."

Dean licks the seam of Castiel's mouth. "You made your own rules. Because I'm different."

This kiss is chaste, no pressure, just a careful graze of lips. It's sweet, affectionate, the kind of kiss Dean has woken his friend with so many times in the last few weeks, and his eyes drift half-closed on the tranquility of it. And then, at last, there is smooth warm skin pressing against Dean, leather and metal falling away in his peripheral vision, and now he can lower himself down and spread his thighs open to cradle Castiel as his friend sinks down to cover him.

For a long moment Castiel contemplates him, intense, and Dean has never quite gotten used to it, the way Castiel devours him that way, the way he looks at Dean like he's the only thing that exists for him, the way his gaze cups Dean and holds him safe in its embrace. Dean feels his cheeks scald like they always do, until the angel's attention flickers away and down to his shoulder. He walks his hand up Dean's arm, holds it there in the air like he did before, sighs as he rests it lightly on the print, just for a second before he snatches it back, pulling it into a fist. And then one finger, extended, and Dean bates his breath as Castiel traces the shape of the brand before dipping his face down to kiss it. 

Dean quivers, because it's worship and he's catching fire from it. "Mine," he mutters, head tipping back and eyes closed against the sun, hand rubbing circles on the bunch and stretch of Castiel's deltoid muscle at the back, imagining he can feel where the angel's wings spring from his body. He ruts up into Castiel's belly, into the relief of friction, stakes his claim again. "Fuckin' _mine_."

Castiel rasps out a growl in response, wicked teeth nipping Dean now, and it sends little snap-bursts of energy coursing brilliant through Dean's skin, making him hiss out his desire as Castiel kisses his way to Dean's nipple, licks across it and stops, breath cool on the damp patch.

"I feel I know this body," Castiel muses, and Dean cranes his neck to see that the angel is examining a puckered, silvery scar that starts just under Dean's top rib and meanders jaggedly down his torso.

Castiel darts his eyes up to meet Dean's, his gaze naked with wonder. "I feel I know this dear flesh, and the soul that lives inside it. I feel I know the stories these scars tell, and it hurts me to see the evidence of these wounds… is it love that makes my eyes so keen?" 

And _fuck_ , that pierces Dean, so that he finds he has no adequate response and can only stare back dumbly as Castiel returns to his examination, kissing along a bar of Dean's ribcage.

"I feel I know these bones, that I held the broken fragments and dust of them in my hands." The angel's face creases with a sadness that entrances Dean, so that he forgets the way his stomach knots tight at the words as Castiel continues. "They were so fragile. I collected the pieces of them, of _you_. I gazed at your face, but it was a cracked skull, and you didn't see me because you had no eyes, only the hollow spaces where they had been."

Castiel places his hand flat over Dean's sternum then, cocks his head like he's listening, and when he looks at Dean again, his stare has gone dark and knowing. "How can it be that I feel I know this heart, that its beat calls to me? How can it be that I believe I breathed life into it once?"

_My resurrection_.

It twists bitter and brutal through Dean, and for a second the recall of what went before he dug his way out of his grave is too heavy, too bloody, too bound up with forty years of pain and trauma, and too weighted with guilt. But Castiel is still focusing that unique, invasive mix of fondness and laser intensity on Dean, waiting on him. "You dreamed of me," Dean succumbs finally, and he puts his hand to Castiel's face, rubs his thumb along his friend's cheekbone. 

"How can it be that I want, that I _need_ , with every part of me?" Castiel marvels softly, and his eyelashes sweep down as he turns into the caress, kisses Dean's palm, traces the lines there with the tip of his tongue and trails it on down Dean's finger. It's oddly innocent in a way that makes a lump swell in Dean's throat until Castiel bows his head again, and all at once his tongue is a devious, squirming thing on Dean's belly, his mouth voracious as he tastes the quiver and jump of Dean's muscles underneath him.

Dean can't help but spasm under his attention because it feels like static electricity is slithering across his skin and in through his pores to spread luxuriantly through him, and, "Jesus," he hears himself squawk out in an embarrassing falsetto, because Castiel is tugging his pants down now, crabbing back to pull them over his feet before he nestles himself between Dean's legs and nuzzles the crease of his thigh.

Dean grunts as his cock leaps up for attention, straining to be touched, and Castiel doesn't hesitate, opens wide and seals his lips tight around the tip before he slides down, twists and pulls up again, and a whine eases up out of Dean involuntarily because his friend's mouth is scorching, wet, leaking spit that leaves a glistening trail along the shaft and across his fingers where they grip Dean. The slick pressure of it has Dean's thighs trembling with his need to drive himself in, but he controls the urge, settles for slow, shallow thrusts, reaching out a shaking hand to card through Castiel's hair as he surfs the angel's mouth. He closes his eyes, can't hold back a groan as Castiel slaps his tongue against the head, worrying it in earnest now, teasing back and forth against the ridge and veins, probing the slit; and there are teeth involved somewhere too, Dean can feel the hard, blunt scrape of them along the spine of his cock. Castiel is making that same dirty, rumbling moan of enjoyment, lips smacking noisily as he suckles Dean so hard it could almost be painful, only it isn't, it's so much pleasure Dean can feel his fists, his toes, and his balls seize up with it. 

When Castiel releases him, with a slurped-out popping sound that is nothing short of filthy, Dean blinks his eyes open again, starts a feeble protest, bites it back down and goggles at the sight of the angel looming above him, all lean lines and wiry muscle against the sky, one leg bent at an angle so he can work himself open, his fingers shiny-slick with his own spit.

"Fuck," Dean puffs out weakly, and in the next second Castiel is spreading himself, and then all Dean knows is snug, torrid heat melting around his cock as his friend's ass swallows it whole.

The angel shudders, eyes going wide and round as he spears himself on Dean, flopping forward to brace himself with a hand either side of Dean's shoulders, and Dean's cry comes out shrill and ragged as instinct takes over and has him arching up to meet his friend, slapping his hands down onto Castiel's thighs, fingers kneading the muscles.

Castiel's brow creases for a moment of stock-still concentration before he shifts himself, rolling his ass just slightly, the motion rippling up through him. And again, just as deliberate, and Castiel's cheeks flush as Dean watches, his eyelids closing to half-mast, so that he looks drugged. His shoulders drop, his whole body loose and limber as he goes again, again, _again_. He starts to find a lazy rhythm until he's riding Dean easy and slow, and Dean can scarcely breathe with it, can only blink hard until it occurs to him to lick some moisture back into his lips and ask for what he needs. "Faster," he strangles out of himself then. "Christ. Cas. You need to…" He hears his voice go thin and reedy as Castiel does as he's told and picks up the pace, and it's still not enough, _never enough_ , and, "Fuck yourself on me," Dean begs. "Harder. Please."

Castiel grunts and pushes back against him with more force, slamming down onto Dean, up-down, back-forth, and Dean comes back to his senses for long enough to remember he should be meeting each bump with a grind of his own. He flexes his pelvis, buries himself deep, groans through the feeling of being engulfed in a lithe, thick, searing-hot tube of pressure as he slides his hands further along Castiel's thighs, resting them firm and steady on the jut of Castiel's hips. He keeps his eyes locked on Castiel's face, and his mouth goes dry again at the moment he knows his friend has found exactly the right angle, because he can see it in the way Castiel's eyelids flutter rapidly and his whole frame twitches, can hear it in the deep bass rumble that starts up, and _shit_ , Castiel can find octaves so low they don't even exist.

"Look at me," Dean says, because he needs eye contact, needs to share this with his friend. _I need you_ , he had mumbled in the crypt, through pulped lips and a jaw smashed by his friend's knuckles, but here he feels reckless, and he will say what he meant. "I love you," he gasps, and he feels himself pinned on burning blue as they rock together, Castiel gripping Dean so tight in there that Dean knows he won't last any length of time. "I love you," he chokes out again, while he keeps driving himself up and in, and Castiel cries out, clings and clutches at Dean's cock damned perfectly as Dean's orgasm erupts, so blindingly intense his eyes go foggy and unfocused and he's only dimly aware of Castiel's head tilting back, his mouth an O as Dean fills him up.

In the next second, Castiel is kissing Dean until he thinks he might have no air left in his lungs, fisting his fingers in Dean's hair and pushing his head back, and Dean is damned obedient, baring his neck for the angel as he sucks and nuzzles his way down the column of Dean's throat. Castiel nips his way along the line of Dean's shoulder, his teeth testing the meat of the muscle so that sharp, delicious pain slices through it and pulls a curse from Dean even while he is giving himself up to the aftershocks rippling through his loins, every part of him feeling blissed out and sated as Castiel's hand slides down over his hip to his flank. 

Castiel hums as he goes, laying plush rosette-kisses he cools with his breath, giving Dean's dick a moist, considerate skim of lips where it flops, spent, across Dean's thigh. And then Dean's eyes snap open as his leg is heaved up almost carelessly, the protest dying before it even leaves his vocal chords as Castiel buries his face down at Dean's balls. Dean thinks he might whimper at the feel of stubble scouring the soft skin there, Castiel mouthing and tugging at it, but he knows for sure that a sob hitches out of him when Castiel's tongue teases its way up behind his sac. Long, slow strokes then, like hot, wet skeins of silk sliding over Dean's hole, sharp blade of it lapping at him, its point jabbing into his core as Castiel licks him open; a finger now, and Dean groans, angles his hips up to flirt with it, feels the muscle lip invitingly at Castiel's knuckle before it yields and gives way. The digit forges in, curls just right, and _white-out_. Dean yelps, and he could swear his exhausted dick gives a little pulse. He lifts his head, examines it, and _fuck-yes_ , it's filling up so it can get back in the game, and he can spare a second to watch it swell. "Not bad for an old guy," he wheezes, and when he focuses dazedly on Castiel, the angel is studying his face, eyes bright and avid.

"Fucker," Dean accuses, as he feels the relentless push of another finger. Castiel's teeth show before he disappears again, and he's more methodical there now, tongue dancing lightly around Dean's rim as his fingers pump in and out. It's leisurely but it sends arousal coiling though Dean's ass, his dick, his balls, his belly, sends it careering through his veins and streaking along his spinal cord to scramble his brain, so that Castiel's mouth, his fingers, and the slick, hard promise of his cock are all that exist. "Jesus," Dean manages, as his head falls limp back onto the ground, and he closes his eyes. "More. Need more." 

Castiel's answering growl is carnal, the fingers are suddenly gone, and there is only the sensation of gaping open down there as Dean waits. He is distantly aware of rummaging sounds then, followed by clinking, and he cracks his eyelids along to the trickle of warm liquid into the cut of his ass and a familiar scent wafting over him. _Incense?_ he wonders vaguely, but the pads of Castiel's fingers are a distraction from rationality, sliding over him and into him again, smooth and slippery, and Dean drifts on it for a few seconds of ecstasy until they stop.

He comes back to himself for long enough to see the angel tipping a small urn over his palm, and _fuck, holy oil, is that even allowed?_ before stripping his cock. The organ is thick and dark in Castiel's hand, the head engorged blood red, and Dean craves it as much as he ever has, his lust gone fiery hot as Castiel lines himself up. And at last there is the blunt, velvet tip of it prodding at him, and Dean exhales into it, letting his muscles fall lax as Castiel breaches him and pushes in with controlled force. It burns, and it's a good burn, a counterpoint to the stuffed full feeling and the deeper ache as Castiel nudges his hips forward, sinking into Dean a little further with each twitch of his butt, until he pauses on a soft moan.

When Dean looks up, his friend is wild-eyed, and Dean reaches for him, grips his thigh. "It's good," he says tightly. "It's right. It's _meant_."

Castiel nods, the gesture panicked and jerky, keeps burrowing forward, and Dean breathes through the smart and sting of it as he adjusts, until Castiel is fully sheathed, balls nestling against Dean's ass. He makes a hoarse sound, leans forward and down, and Dean rises up to meet him, sliding a hand around the back of his neck, gripping him there. The kiss is rough enough to bruise, clicking with teeth, and Dean needs Castiel to move inside him, needs him to wear a groove of space into the ache and fullness, needs it so desperately. "Move," he hisses, and Castiel nods again, still frantic.

He pulls out carefully, bites his bottom lip as he stares down at where their bodies meet, and Dean grunts, curves his back and props himself on his elbow, watching as Castiel feeds his cock back inside him, painfully slow. Dean feels every millimeter, long, sleek length of it slotting back into its berth, a perfect fit, and watching it disappear gives him the base, obscene lurch in his belly that he has felt every time they've done this. Ebb and flow in again as Castiel flexes his hips, the second push more confident and decisive, and Dean clenches his teeth at the friction, his free hand fusing itself to Castiel's hip now to guide him.

Castiel rasps a harsh, long-drawn-out whine, circles his pelvis as if he's straining to bury himself even deeper, and _that's it_ , the dome of his cock is right where Dean needs it, grinding into his prostate, dragging back and forth there. It's relentless, and the contact strikes sparks that skate along Dean's nerves to his brain, where they detonate like firecrackers and send thorny tendrils of fire back along the same pathways to the nooks and crannies of him. He surrenders to it absolutely, hears himself make a noise that is an incoherent mixture of yell-cry, because it's like his whole body is a tuning fork Castiel is striking so that he resonates at a constant, sustained pitch of acute need for _more_ , and, "God, please," he pants out. "Please let me..."

His reaction ignites something crazed in his friend, Castiel's hips suddenly snapping so eagerly that Dean can feel himself being pushed across the ground, feel the scratch and scrape of grit and stones. He thinks abstractedly that his ass cheeks are going to be cut to ribbons as he paddles for something, anything to anchor him. He finds a scrubby little bush he grabs and clings to so he can keep pushing back onto Castiel as he rams in, flails the other hand out instinctively, folding his fingers around his own cock where it bobs. He fucks into his fist as he arches up into every inward slam, his heart hammering so fast he wonders if it might arrest, and the tension in his balls wound so tight he thinks they might explode.

Dean sobs out as the energy of his orgasm percolates inside him, and above him the angel stokes his own release, pounding in so hard now that Dean can feel it vibrate up though his bones to his skull. He keeps his eyes fixed to Castiel's face, sees his friend's eyes go wide and rapt and his jaw drop open as he skates the cusp of it like Dean is doing, and Dean contracts his ass to grip as tight to Castiel as Castiel gripped him. He keeps stripping himself through it all, feels his balls contract and heat sear through his dick. Wet warmth spatters messy on his belly as stuttered, high-pitched sounds start to burst from between Castiel's lips and the angel curls in on himself, driving in deep and rough.

Castiel pulls back, pushes in again, weak and spasmodic, and the chafing friction inside Dean is suddenly gone, Castiel's dick gliding wet through the slick of semen now. And then he's collapsing down onto Dean, breath coming ragged and fever-hot on Dean's neck. His mouth starts moving there almost at once, crooning endearments, sucking at the skin, awarding it random licks and indulgent kisses that send shivers through Dean.

They stay there, and Dean stares up at the sky, the horizon painted pink and orange now as the long day closes, the silence disturbed only by the mild _shhhhh_ of the breeze and the busy hum of insects. He feels too wrung out to move, even if his abused dick isn't all that comfortable trapped under Castiel's hip, but when he can summon up the energy he flops his arm up to wrap it around Castiel, strokes his palm up and down his friend's back, fingers curling to scuff the vertebrae gently. Castiel makes a pleased thrumming noise that reverberates against Dean's skin, his own hand trailing up to find Dean's scar, fitting into its boundaries perfectly. And Dean muses tiredly that the need to touch feels like new, and that in a way it is new, because he saw the surprise and sheer astonishment in Castiel's eyes as they did this for the first time again.

"What are the angels even doing here?" he thinks to ask eventually, and Castiel stretches on top of him and pulls out, not too gentle, the sting of it making Dean wince.

"Troy is fated to fall," Castiel says simply, as he settles back down, flat, hard planes of his body fitting to Dean's with no spaces. "We are the agents of fate."

Dean snorts at that. "No free will?"

Castiel props his head up on his hand to study Dean. He's still disheveled and hazy-eyed, but his attention is complete and Dean can feel the soft devotion in his friend's expression like a warmth that seeps down to his bones, pouring into all of his cold, empty spaces like it always has.

"Perhaps," Castiel replies, and he sounds awestruck. "After all, a malak will fall from grace for a mortal." He glances around them, more alert. "We shall stay here together… we'll grow olives, farm goats."

_Fuck_ , and, "You're going to fall?" Dean returns, his shock making him more brusque than he intended. "Here? _Now_?"

Castiel smiles at him, a small, hesitant smile. "I think I was lost when I first laid my hand on you. But I have no regrets."

The reply sends a chill through Dean, a horrible nausea cutting like claws through his gut, but despite that there is a moment when he thinks about it, thinks about living out his days in a whole different era, thinks about living peacefully, no demon deals, no Hell, no seals, no apocalypse, no devil riding his brother. But time travel, how the fuck does it work, because if his Castiel sent him back doesn't that mean they _did_ meet, that it all went down like it did, that they found each other in all the damage, and grief, and loss? Doesn't it mean his Castiel is probably working on a way to get him back right now?

"I don't think I can stay," he says more gently, after a stretched-out moment. "I know you, _future_ you. You sent me back here, and you're probably trying to pull me out."

Castiel's face crumples into disappointment even as Dean speaks, but he brightens in the next second, sounds determined, maybe even fierce. "But here, things can _stop_. So perhaps I won't let go of you."

The irony of that squeezes Dean's chest tight, but he makes himself focus on the fact time is short, that he could dematerialize at any second, and he pushes aside any misgivings he might feel about using this as an opportunity to set at least some of it right. "You have to let me go," he continues, firm now. "But there are things you need to know, things that are going to happen… things your guys do, things _you_ do, things that—"

"I won't remember you," Castiel cuts in, whisper-soft.

Dean stops, words freezing in his throat.

"Zachariah and Raphael will know what I've done if I return to my brothers," Castiel says, still quiet. "It is considered blasphemy, and they will see that my grace is – soiled. If I don't fall, I will be re-educated, reset. It's…" He trails off for a moment. "Thorough. So I've heard. And so, I won't remember you."

As he processes that, the implication of _reset_ scuds through Dean's mind like thunderclouds over the sun: angel boot camp and _I don't serve you_ ; whatever the fuck Naomi was still doing to the Heavenly drones, and _his_ Castiel staring down at him, cold and implacable, his serenity barely punctuated by the impact of his fist slamming into Dean's face. And after it, all that still remains is the hard reality that the Castiel who strode into the barn in Pontiac had never known Dean before Hell, and never would have if he had fallen here.

_It isn't random_ , Dean tells himself. _It isn't chance_.

He represses his despair, shakes his head. "You can't fall," he says, and he knows he goes a little hoarse. "You don't fall now. That isn't how it happens. It's destiny, there's a plan."

His friend's brow furrows into a look that seems part-crushed, part-doubt. "But… what of free will?"

Dean swallows past his turmoil, past the lump in his throat, past the inevitability of pain, Castiel's pain, his pain, Sam's and Bobby's too. "Free will is an illusion," he says, making himself sound assured even as he falls into the bottomless blue of Castiel's gaze. 

Castiel broods on it before sighing out what sounds like resignation. "Will you tell me your name?" he sidetracks then, his tone gone dull.

Dean slides his hand up across the back of Castiel's shoulder, threads his fingers through his hair, and he doesn't know how but he manages to fold his features into a smile as he answers.

"It's Dean."

"Hello, Dean," Castiel gravels out solemnly, and the bittersweetness of it has Dean's eyes stinging.

Castiel dips his head then, brushes his lips across Dean's, the caress tender, before he rolls off and to the side, tugging Dean after him with casual ease so that their positions are reversed. "The night draws in," he observes, and with that Dean hears a rustle and he's shrouded in warmth and softness, a wing clasped and tucked around him like a blanket that hides the tears he's blinking back as exhaustion leaches through him.

"Rest," Castiel murmurs. "I have no need for sleep. I will watch over you."

Dean jolts awake on a grunt, hot, sweaty, and spitting feathers.

_No, not feathers_.

It's Castiel's hair, crazed tufts of it tickling Dean to consciousness, and Castiel is wrapped around him, arms and legs both, like a baby monkey hanging on tight and possessive to Dean, his stubble abrasive and his breath heavy and hot where Dean's shoulder slopes into his neck. There's a dull, satisfying ache in Dean's ass, and he can smell the acrid tang of come drifting in the air. When he shifts slightly, he can feel it tacky on his lower belly, under Castiel's thigh, where it braids through Dean's legs.

As he crawls closer to fully alert, Dean realizes he's lying on memory foam and blinking up at the familiar cracked, stained ceiling of their bedroom. He casts his eyes down to see the same movie flickering on the television, the aging video recorder he picked up at the local Goodwill creaking away in its usual labored fashion.

_Dream_.

It was a dream, none of it real, the other Castiel a phantom of his imagination as he slept. And the one hundred-eighty pounds of solid muscle draped across and around Dean, mouth a little slack and cheeks flushed, sleeps too, because it's _his_ Castiel, and he's wearing down, his power dwindling every day; and when he wakes up he'll be in his usual morning mood, griping peevishly about the limits of encroaching humanity until Dean swallows his complaints and reminds him just how good being a real boy can be.

Dean can't hold back the wave of tenderness that surges up inside him. He wriggles into a more comfortable position, creeps his hand up and puts it on Castiel's cheek. "I liked past-you," he whispers to his friend while he sleeps. "He was pretty badass. But I love now-you, stupid fuckin' angel. Don't ever let go of me again."

Maybe Castiel isn't as out of it as he looks, because Dean could swear the angel's lips curl up just fractionally, and he mumbles something muffled that might be _hello, Dean._

Dean grins, settles back and sighs as he focuses at the television.

He frowns, and he knows his eyes go round as he goggles at the screen.

"Fuck," he eases out, long, low and heartfelt, as tiny armor-clad figures push the Wooden Pig of Troy into position outside the gates of the city.

**A/N**

If they ever tell my story, let them say I walked with giants... _Adapted from the movie Troy_

Sing oh goddess, the rage of Achilles... _Taken from Homer's Iliad_

My sincere thanks to (and never-ending admiration for!) Euclase for the stunning art!


End file.
